The present invention relates to a buffering and supporting device for a circuit board, and especially to a supporting structure used in a computer mother board.
The prior art mother board of a personal computer is firmly secured to a computer housing by screwing its periphery to the computer housing. A supporting device is installed at a middle portion of the mother board to sustain the mother board""s weight and to cause the mother board to be retained at a preselected horizontal orientation, and at a proper distance to the bottom surface of the housing. As the prior art structure shown in FIG. 6 illustrates, an upper side of a post 5 has a buckle head 51 and the lower side has a support 52. The buckle head 51 serves to buckle the post 5 to a circuit board. The support 52 only has the effect of supporting. Namely, the solid cylinder support 52 only has the function of supporting without a buffering effect for deformation. Therefore, it cannot meet the requirement of the present invention. Furthermore, given the trend of current computers toward compact designs, the structure of the mother board becomes weaker and weaker. The prior art supporting device has great rigidity in the direction along which it experiences the most bearing force. As result, in the transportation or testing process of a mother board, the supporting position of the mother board by the post 5 is easily destroyed. Thus, the product yield is reduced. Moreover, since the mother board is becoming thinner and thinner, its strength of material is becoming weaker and weaker. Therefore, it becomes more likely that this kind of mother board will be accidentally destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective.
Accordingly, the primary object of the present invention is to provide a buffering and supporting device for a circuit board. Since in the prior art, a mother board is combined to a housing, a compact design is a basic requirement of a personal computer. The prior art supporting structure is not suitable, moreover, the design of a mother board must suffer from vibrations. Therefore, the present invention provides a buffering and supporting device, which is connected to a mother board without being screwed to the housing. Furthermore, when the mother board suffers from shocks or vibrations, the flexible support portion on the supporting device will bend and deform for reducing the possibility that the mother board is broken. Meanwhile, the mother board is protected from being damaged.
In order to achieve aforesaid object, the present invention provides a buffering and supporting device for a circuit board comprising a flexible supporter at a lower side thereof and a buckle head at an upper head thereof. The buckle head for retaining to a hole of a circuit board includes a pair of elastic wings extending laterally with the tip of each wing against a surface of a circuit board. The flexible supporter has at least one flexible support portion and an intermediate plate is provided between the buckle head and the flexible supporter. The flexible support portion is installed with a pair of cambered or straight flexible supporting pieces, or a single integral flexible supporting pieces. The upper end of each flexible supporting piece is connected to the bottom of the plate. The lower end of each flexible supporting piece is connected to a bottom plate. Thus, a plurality of flexible support devices serve to sustain the vibrations generated from the circuit board and to provide suffering and supporting force thereto.
The various objects and advantages of the present invention will be more readily understood from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended drawing.